Hawai'i
HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN
Midway birds exhibit signs of lead poisoning
By Helen Altonn, haltonn@starbulletin.com
September 14, 2003
Baby gooney birds on Midway are developing lead poisoning by eating
paint chips, despite cleanup efforts when the island was converted to a
National Wildlife Refuge from a military base.
"The chicks are eating paint chips directly -- it's not from
contaminated soil," reported Myra Finkelstein, a University of
California, Santa Cruz, graduate student who is studying the birds, "and
knowing that can help guide remediation efforts."
Results of a study by Finkelstein and colleagues Donald Smith and
Roberto Gwiazda appeared in the August issue of Environmental Science &
Technology.
Midway, about 1,200 miles west-northwest of Hawaii, is home to the
largest known Laysan albatross breeding population -- about 65 percent
of the total global population. The last census in 2001 counted 287,000
breeding pairs of the albatrosses, also known as gooney birds.
The Navy spent millions of dollars scraping lead-based paint from
buildings and repainting with oil-based paint after closing its facility
there in the mid-1990s.
Still, the UCSC team found high levels of toxin in chicks.
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